Yet another top-flight hire to celebrate.

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This blog is awash in Lingerie Legends, and we’ve got just a little bit more for you. USA Today covered the competition today, noting in its ad industry rundown that the winning avatar will get a two-page spread in the September issue of Second Style, an online fashion magazine for Second Life users.

We’re happy indeed to announce that we’ve just hired social media marketing pioneer Gregory Kennedy as our Creative Director.

Gregory brings us over a decade of wide-ranging experience. We’re especially excited to be bringing him on board from Cyworld USA, where he led a team of five. He redesigned the website, launched the logo, and localized the Cyworld brand identity for the US market. Before that he was Senior Art Director at Carat Fusion, where he led creation of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” MySpace page – it attracted over 250,000 friends in its first 30 days.

On weekends, Gregory can be found creating pixel-art hip hop parody videos. Top that.

We’ve had a few strategic arrivals in recent weeks, but we’re especially proud to welcome our new Chief Creative Officer, Douglas Gayeton. Douglas’ eclectic career has found him at the cutting edge of filmmaking, video game design, and social media. His documentary film, “Molotov Alva: Video Diaries from My Second Life”, was the first machinima ever screened at the Cannes Film Festival and is the first piece of its kind to be acquired for distribution as a television series. Prior to joining Millions of Us, Douglas also worked with MTV on their virtual world initiative.

Douglas’ arrival is a key development in Millions of Us’ strategic plan to assemble the world’s leading talent across multiple virtual world and social media platforms. He’ll mentor our production teams and inject a fresh perspective into all of our client campaigns. And who better - Douglas created “Delta State”, an award winning animated TV series, and also directed and co-wrote “Johnny Mnemonic,” an interactive film based on a story by cyberpunk author William Gibson. He is also among the earliest architects of social networking technology, having built applications for AOL, Microsoft, Vivendi and Napster.

Those of us in the Second Life development business have been saying for a while that virtual worlds are going to explode in the Entertainment industry in the next year. Now it’s confirmed in Andrew Wallenstein’s recent piece in the Hollywood Reporter

This quote from me makes it official that Millions of Us is going to be laser focused on the category. “We’re going to double down that this is the year entertainment explodes in Second Life.”

Edmunds (via edmunds.com) is reporting some interesting news about Scion.

From the article: “The Scion xD, a compact sedan, is slated to replace the outgoing xA and is expected to hit showrooms in spring 2007. In an unusual part of the Scion reveal, the automaker will also stage a simultaneous press conference in Scion City, in the virtual world “Second Life,” to introduce the computer-simulated versions of the ‘08 models. The Scion unveilings will take place February 8. “